


Five Times Castiel Understood Sam Winchester, and One Time He Didn't

by blackrabbit42



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dinosaurs, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 21:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17475017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrabbit42/pseuds/blackrabbit42
Summary: Come to think of it, understanding Sam in general would make his life easier all around. For that, Castiel had to go back. Way back.





	Five Times Castiel Understood Sam Winchester, and One Time He Didn't

Sam was mad at him. Again. Not the kind of mad where Castiel thought he might have to do something on a save Dean scale of heroism to earn forgiveness, more like the dirty looks around the bunker, and not leaving toothpaste in the guest bathroom sort of level of mad. Usually the more intense the anger, the easier it was to figure out what Sam was mad about, and true to form, this low-level anger was proving to be completely baffling. Sam really seemed to think it should be obvious why he was mad, and the fact that Castiel wasn’t “getting it” just seemed to be making Sam more and more exasperated.

Dean wasn’t helping at all, either. He’d see Cas coming around the corner, and suddenly find he had something to do in another room. Sam must have gotten to him first. and given him a firm warning specifically not to clue Castiel in. Sometimes Sam had this thing where he thought it was important for people to figure things out on their own.

It was just as well. Usually when Dean took him out for a drive, to give Sam some space and to try to explain why Sam was mad, it more or less would boil down to “Sam hasn’t been laid in a while,” which Castiel suspected was really oversimplifying things a bit.

So, he’d have to figure it out on his own, and since he really couldn’t think of anything he’d done, it really came down to trying to understand Sam better.

And come to think of it, understanding Sam in general would make his life easier all around. For that, he had to go back. Way back.

********

This was the beginning. Castiel stood on a windswept rock, remembering not to breath the toxic air, and trying not to mind the spray of seawater that darkened the hem of his coat. Behind him, the landscape was barren, uninterrupted by the green plants that would later cloak the rocks, and provide shade and shelter from the sun.

In front of him was a small tide pool, salty and teaming with life. And the life he was interested in was about to begin. He knelt down on his heels, to get a closer look. This was a time so remote that most of the creatures that lived in the water before him would never be known to humans, never be named or classified, not even in the fossil record. Yet this was how far back he had to go to witness the first incarnation of Sam Winchester.

It hadn’t happened yet. Castiel could see the amoeboid-like creature that would become Sam and Dean, but it was still in the process of splitting; their souls were still mixed, an amalgam of the two of them that was unrecognizable as either. He waited.

When it happened, when the last threads of what was Sam and what was Dean were separated, Castiel felt a shift, a tip in the scales of the universe. At least, in this locality of this universe. Let’s not get carried away. But something was definitely different. All the possible realities where there was no Sam and Dean winked out of existence without even a whimper.

And there he was. Amoeba Sam. This brand new, shining soul, reaching out with his pseudopods to see what it could learn of the world. It learned to move. It learned to sense food in the environment, and move toward it. It learned how to eat, a process that would later be called phagocytosis by humans, a process which Amoeba Dean took to with great enthusiasm.

Castiel watched them for hours, feeling a little nostalgic and sad for this Sam. His life would never again be this simple, this pure. There was nothing to do but learn. Something Sam would love in all his forms, throughout all of time. This Dean, too, was simple to understand; impossible to anger, impossible to disappoint.

These two souls, throughout the remainder of history would never be split again. They would be snuffed out countless times, and lose pieces of themselves, and grow, and change, and be tarnished, but would remain at the core what they were now in this moment; two halves of the same soul.

He wasn’t going to learn anything about why Sam was mad at him here, of course. But it was good to know what he was starting with. In the fourth hour of their first life, Sam Amoeba and Dean Amoeba were swallowed by a Halkieria evangelista, a one-inch long slug in the pre-historical version of body armor. It wouldn’t be the last time a monster ended their lives.

********

Millions of lives later, Castiel finds Sam and Dean in _Argentinosaurus huinculensis_ form. The largest land animals to ever roam the earth. The air is hot and moist, noisy with insects and the sound of Dean chewing. Fireflies blink on and off in the fading twilight.  

Sam has paused in the task to bend his long neck down and peer at Castiel with one inquisitive eye. Castiel stands by Argentinosaurus Dean’s leg, his hand resting on the rough leathery skin. Argentinosaurus Dean doesn’t even feel it. He keeps chewing like it’s his job, which to be fair, it is. To support his massive body, he would have to eat for nearly eighteen hours a day. Which is easy when you don’t have to spend all your time keeping an eye out for predators.

Argentinosaurus Sam isn’t exactly worried about the tiny creature that’s touching his brother’s leg, but he’s not happy about it either. He sucks in a great breath through his nose, investigating Castiel’s scent. He blasts it out in annoyance, enveloping Castiel in a warm mist of grassy scented dinosaur breath. Sam nudges him with his snout, knocking him to the ground. Dean continues to chew.

A giant. That’s what Sam is here. A giant with nothing to fear. There’s a pack of unquillosaurus not far into the fringe of the jungle, and although Sam is aware of them, he stands his ground, unyielding and unconcerned. Nothing can touch him.

Fearlessness. That’s what Castiel sees here, and peace. Never again would Sam have the luxury of this life, a life lived without fear, without worry, without doubt in his own abilities.

Castiel spends twenty four years in the late cretaceous, because it feels so marvelous to walk the world with these kings of the earth. To see Sam without fear, without doubt. To see Dean do nothing but eat all day, reaching up into the trees to tear down the leaves, sweeping his head low and ripping up the ferns. To see Argentinosaurus Sam with all the time he wanted to look about him and observe.

Sometimes, he walks with them. Sometimes, he rides, because, wouldn’t you? Of course, you would. That’s the best; pacing through the jungle, perched atop the swaying head of Sam or Dean, watching the world go by, and knowing it would be many, many ages before anything would dare hurt either of them.

********

Crowley had it wrong, Sam was never a moose. He was this; _Megaloceros giganticus_ , also known as the Irish Elk, a massive species of deer that stood over six feet at the shoulder with antlers that spanned twelve feet from tip to tip. His long shaggy sliver pelt gave him a ghost-like appearance as he picked his way through the misty bog in search of the choicest mosses.

Irish Elk Dean was no longer the happily oblivious vegetation muncher that Castiel had witnessed in the Cretaceous. He is the first one to spot Castiel, and he starts, hooves splashing in the waterlogged vegetation. His nostrils flair and he bellows a warning snort that stops Irish Elk Sam in his tracks.

The two stand shoulder-to-shoulder, eyeing Castiel warily. These two have known predators. Their ears twitch back, and then forward again. They know that danger in front of them is often a distraction from the danger that lurks unseen elsewhere.

Sam is the first to back down. He touches his muzzle to Dean’s flank, eyes never leaving Castiel. After a time, Dean lowers his head as well, and the two walk past, stately princes in an ancient forest. Castiel follows at a distance, murky water bubbling up through the peat to soak his shoes.

He follows them for six years, watching. He’s there when Irish Elk Dean twists his foreleg in a sinkhole, and is unable to walk for three days. Irish Elk Sam stands guard against a pack of wolves that circles the glen at dusk, yipping and growling just out of reach of Sam’s hard antlers and striking hooves. He’s there when they fight off a Panthera spelaea, cranky and irritable from her winter hibernation, hungry with eyes bigger than her stomach. He watches them fight off what, for them, were monsters of the Pleistocene, side-by-side. He doesn’t stay for the end.

******** 

They are not always brothers. Often, but not always. In this life, they are friends. Two boys, roughly the same age, barefooted and scrawny. Sam is apprenticed to a scholar, Dean to a brickmaker. They sleep in the same loft, backs pressed together for warmth, and tell each other stories of their day.

Castiel takes on the form of a sparrow and watches them from the rafters.

“I don’t understand,” Dean says. “How can those marks be words? I see them with my eyes, I don’t hear them with my ears.”

“Let’s play a game,” Sam says. “When I make this mark,” he draws an inverted chevron in the dust with his finger, “you say pah.”

Dean quirks an eyebrow doubtfully, but dutifully says “pah.”

“When I draw this, you say lah,” Sam says, drawing a half circle.

“Lah.”

“And this.” He finishes with a horizontal line. “You say eem.”

Sam tests Dean, pointing to the symbols at random, making Dean laugh as he speeds up the series of, pah, lah, pah, eem, lah, pahs. Then he wipes them away with the side of his fist. “Now try this,” he says. He draws a horizontal line, then the chevron, then the half circle.

“Eem. Pah. Lah.” Dean recites.

“Now faster, put them together,” Sam urges, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Eem. Pah. Lah.” Dean looks at Sam like he’s completely crazy, but there’s something else there too. Admiration. Pride. Simple pride at just knowing Sam. A vague sort of possessiveness.

“Faster,” Sam says, watching Dean’s face carefully, waiting for him to get it.

“Eempahlah,” Dean says, and then his eyes go wide. “Impala! Like the deer!”

Sam nods. “See? It’s easy. Try—”

“Wait a minute. How is that easy? Why not just say Impala to begin with? Say we’re out hunting—”

Sam snorts a half laugh.

“Hey! It could happen. Say we’re out hunting, and you see an impala, and you want to let me know. By the time I’ve figured out your game here, the deer would be long gone. If we’re ever in that situation, please, just say impala, ok?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Yes, if we’re ever in that situation, I promise, I will say impala instead of write it. But you’re missing the point. Say there’s a bunch of hunters, and two of them go ahead as scouts. They can leave messages to let the other hunters know what they find, and where they’ve gone.”

Dean thinks about it for a while, then shrugs. “Sure. Show me some more.” He kicks back and watches as Sam launches enthusiastically into his demonstration.

“So get this,” Sam says, “if I add a line here...”

Their life is not without its troubles. Dean’s work is back-breaking, and he often returns to the loft at night too tired to speak, or even eat. Sam’s master is impatient and cruel, sometimes thrashing him with a reed if Sam is too slow at his studies, leaving long red welts across the backs of his thighs. Those nights, he sleeps on his stomach, head on Dean’s shoulder, Dean’s fingers worked through his hair.

Sam grows to be a great scholar, and teaches Dean his numbers and weights, in turn helping Dean become a successful brick merchant. They no longer need to sleep in a loft, and Sam often misses Dean on cold winter nights. One night, in their old age, Dean slips a gift into Sam’s cramped and arthritic hand. A warming stone to ease his aches. It’s inscribed with three symbols: — ∧ ∪.

********

Castiel has been an infantryman in Commandant Dean Herstal’s regiment for six months before they find themselves in the path of the German advance in the far reaches of the French Ardennes. In this life, Sam and Dean never met until Sam rose through the ranks to become a Captain in Dean’s unit.

These two are only one life away from becoming the Sam and Dean that Castiel knows in the present day, and truth be told, they’re nearly indistinguishable. Dean is hard and self-sacrificing, Sam smart and stubborn. Between the two of them, they’ve swept across France, winning battles when all seemed lost, defying the odds, facing death every day and waking up to do it again the next.

Today, it seems they’ve met their match.

The unit has been torn to shreds. Between the bombs and German snipers, Sam no longer knows how many of his unit are still with him, or how many lie bleeding to death in the ditches behind him. He himself has been shot, twice in the right shoulder; that arm hangs useless by his side. His hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat and his cheek is streaked with his own blood. But he refuses to yield. Enough of his men are still able to fire on the Germans to hold their ground, to hold the crucial bridge over the river Meuse.

A German officer has approached the bridge under a white flag. Sam stands in the center, swaying on his feet.

“Captain St-Etienne,” the German says, addressing Sam in French. “This is a waste of lives. Come now, we both know the outcome. Surrender now, and save the lives of your men.” To Castiel’s eyes, the German looks as weary as Sam, but he is apparently uninjured.

Sam shifts his weight, unsteady on his feet. “My commander told me to hold this bridge,” he says, and the roughened quality of his words betray his pain.

The German wipes a shaky hand over his face. He knows what that means. If the commander isn’t here, if he left Sam in charge, then he’s off somewhere else, probably rallying reinforcements. Castiel can see what perhaps Sam, in his exhaustion, cannot; the man is scared. Frightened, and perhaps as tired as Sam is; it’s been a long night.

“We will run you down with our tanks, Captain.”

“Then you’ll have to. My commander told me to hold this bridge.” He says it like they’re the only words he has left.

The German steps close to Sam, speaking low and deadly. “Listen, St-Etienne, you won’t be able to hold the bridge with your lifeless body. I walk away from here and signal, they’ll take you out first, right here where you stand. I don’t…”

Castiel doesn’t hear the rest, he’s straining his ears, picking up the faint sound of an Amiot 143 approaching. He does hear Sam’s reply though.

“My commander told me to hold this bridge.”

Only a few moments. Only a few moments more. But they don’t make it. A sniper’s bullet pierces Castiel’s chest and he collapses, only to find himself face to face with Sam’s fallen body in the next moment. The last thing he hears is the whine of bombs whistling through the air. Dean has arrived with support.

********

It hadn’t helped. Possibly because if he had really searched, Castiel could have found all those experiences in his own memory without having to make the trip to see it all in person. He had the knowledge already, and having lived through it didn’t make the mystery that is Sam any clearer. Humans always stubbornly remain more than the sum of their parts.

He has an idea though. It’s going to take one last trip.

He finds it in the basement of the British Museum. Lot number 642426.a824. A fragment of brickwork from the middle bronze age, inscribed with three symbols, the meaning of which were lost centuries before. He steals it without any twinge of remorse; it never belonged to the British Museum in the first place. Castiel knows whom it belongs to.

“Sam, I—”

“Cas, I’m really busy right now, can’t you—”

“I have a gift for you, Sam.”

Sam huffs a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Look, if you think that you can just buy my forgiveness with presents, then you’ve been taking advice from Dean for too long. This isn’t over until you get why I’m mad at you, Cas.”

“That’s never going to happen, Sam.”

Sam blinks in surprise. “What? What did you just say?”

“I don’t get it. I never will. You’re human. I’m not. There are some things I am never going to understand unless you spell it out for me. But. I want to. You’d be surprised the lengths I would go to try to understand. That’s something that maybe you don’t get. So here. I brought you this.”

When Castiel holds out the stone, Sam tentatively holds his hand out. His fingers close around the piece, as if they are familiar with its size and shape. Castiel searches Sam’s face for signs of forgiveness, and although he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, he does see something there that gives him hope.

It’s a start.


End file.
